For the most part the editor has deliberately avoided rabid,
shrill, outlandish sites and has opted to include sites that
contain reasoned and civil discourse.

If a particular quote piques your interest, be sure to visit the
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There are nav bars with colored dots you can use to go within this
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"412. Most harmful of all is the message that Microsoft's
actions have conveyed to every enterprise with the potential to
innovate in the computer industry. Through its conduct toward
Netscape, IBM, Compaq, Intel, and others, Microsoft has
demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and
immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing
initiatives that could intensify competition against one of
Microsoft's core products. Microsoft's past success in hurting
such companies and stifling innovation deters investment in
technologies and businesses that exhibit the potential to
threaten Microsoft. The ultimate result is that some innovations
that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole
reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's
self-interest."

"The court concludes that Microsoft maintained its monopoly
power by means and attempted to monopolize the Web browser
market," U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson wrote in a
"conclusions of law" ruling released today."

"It's worth being clear: the Appeals Court affirmed almost every
finding of fact by the lower court that Microsoft used coercion,
intimidation, lying and other anti-competitive actions to
prevent any challenge to its Windows operating system monopoly."

(Judge Thomas Penfield) "Jackson told reporters that Microsoft
Chairman Bill Gates' "testimony is inherently without
credibility" and told a college crowd that "Gates is an
ingenious engineer, but I don't think he is that adept at
business ethics. He has not yet come to realize things he did
(when Microsoft was smaller) he should not have done when he
became a monopoly."

"The Department of Justice settlement with Microsoft will have
a devastating effect on innovation in any segment of the
technology marketplace that Microsoft, the monopolist unbound,
decides to enter."

"Caldera is deeply disappointed by the U.S. government's overt
disregard for the law in its dealings with Microsoft. This is
analogous to what happened in the 1920s in Chicago, when a
notorious criminal was allowed to walk free numerous times
because of his special civic dealings. It's like saying, 'Well
-- Al Capone contributes greatly to Chicago's economic well
being, so we'd better not arrest him, because the economy
would be in dire straits. We'd better let him go back to doing
his thing. And, oh yeah, we'll send someone along to watch
him.' Each tenet of the government's decision regarding
Microsoft reflects that same betrayal of overlooked broken
law.

"I think the settlement represents the biggest threat to
Internet-based business that I've seen in the evolution of the
Internet.

"I think the American economy lost today. I think consumers
lost.

"I think it's a misguided settlement from people who view
themselves as conservatives. They just got snookered. Dick
Armey said the settlement was pro-consumer, and yet there is
not a single consumer out there saying it's pro-consumer. It's
revealed them to be truly naive."

From RealNetworks General Counsel KellyJo MacArthur:

"This agreement allows a declared illegal monopolist to
determine, at its sole discretion, what goes into the monopoly
operating system in the future. This is a reward, not a
remedy.

"We support the work of the States Attorneys General to ensure
that any settlement actually protects consumer rights and
competition in the industry."

From Liberate Technologies chief executive Mitchell Kertzman:

"My guess is that all Bill Gates could do was to suppress a
big grin when he held his press conference this morning. This
settlement doesn't come close to matching the scope of the
violations of antitrust law that Microsoft has been convicted
of.

"It was an inexplicably bad deal for the government."

From Palm chief competitive officer Michael Mace:

"We're quite disappointed. We believe there are a lot of
issues that haven't been addressed." "

Seattle Times staff reporters Tricia Duryee, Monica Soto and
Catherine Tarpley contributed to this report. The Associated
Press also contributed to this report.

MA says, "No!"

"Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly said yesterday that
Massachusetts will refuse to sign on to the government's
proposed settlement of the Microsoft Corp. antitrust suit,
calling it an ineffectual deal that will let Microsoft
''continue to crush all its competition.''

"We're baffled that a settlement imposed against Microsoft for
breaking the law should allow, even encourage, them to
unfairly make inroads into education -- one of the few markets
left where they don't have monopoly power," Mr. Jobs said in a
statement last week."

Bill Gates first saw courtroom action way back in 1977, when
he found himself in a legal scuffle over the rights to a
version of the prgramming language BASIC created by Gates and
fellow Microsoft founder Paul Allen for the world's first PC,
the Altair. At the time, Altair creator Ed Roberts was in the
process of selling his company, MITS, to another firm called
Pertec, and he wanted to give Pertec the rights to BASIC as
well.

But Gates defended his rights to the language, and the judge
sided with the 21-year-old computer whiz, letting him maintain
control over BASIC, and opening the door to Microsoft's
domination of the software industry.

Code in hand, Gates was careful in crafting later deals,
ensuring that he retained power over the software in later
negotiations with companies including IBM.

"The desire to innovate in software systems hasn't changed
since I started programming in 1954. The concept of developing
new versions of software systems, including operating systems
like DOS, VMS and Windows, with new features and functions has
been with us for at least 40 years. When IBM unbundled its
software in 1970 and created a competitive environment,
innovation became more important, because adding features to a
software system improved its marketability. Tie-ins have been
illegal since the end of the 19th century, when the Sherman
Act antitrust laws were written. The question of the legality
of software tie-ins was raised back in the 1960s in several
suits against IBM, which included lawsuits filed by the
Justice Department and Applied Data Research.

Microsoft apparently wants to change the antitrust tie-in laws
by convincing the world that the ability of its staffers to
innovate would be limited if they couldn't integrate freely
and without restraint.

"But Judge Janet C. Hall, who was permitted to award punitive
damages under last year's verdict, ruled Thursday that the
deceptive conduct in which Microsoft had engaged "rises to the
level of reckless and wanton indifference to the harm it
caused Bristol and others."

Microsoft uses an anticompetitive strategy called "embrace and
extend". This means they start with the technology others are
using, add a minor wrinkle which is secret so that nobody else
can imitate it, then use that secret wrinkle so that only
Microsoft software can communicate with other Microsoft
software. In some cases, this makes it hard for you to use a
non-Microsoft program when others you work with use a Microsoft
program. In other cases, this makes it hard for you to use a
non-Microsoft program for job A if you use a Microsoft program
for job B. Either way, "embrace and extend" magnifies the effect
of Microsoft's market power.

"In addition, Microsoft can provide access to and change its
operating code as it wishes. Such an alteration can instantly
render the software of a Microsoft competitor unusable. These
facts ensure Microsoft's future dominance of the software
market."

Gates (was) tripped up... by his company's e-mail system,which
recorded his thuggish efforts to smash companies many times
smaller than his. The facts show that Gates thinks he's above
ethics and the law:

Microsoft created secret functions in Windows and wrote its
applications to take advantage of them. Competitors, denied
the ability to use the operating system to its fullest,
operated at a huge disadvantage. This is manifestly against
the antitrust laws, as companies are forbidden to use their
monopoly status in one market to dominate another market.

When OS/2, IBM's technically superior operating system that
could run Windows software, began to gain ground against
Windows in the early '90s, Microsoft ordered staffers to
circulate rumors about how dangerous it was to install OS/2.
They didn't bother to identify themselves as employees, and it
caused the company much embarrassment when the episode was
revealed. By then, the damage to OS/2 was fatal.

In the trial, executives from several smaller companies
testified that they were given a choice: If they followed
Microsoft's wishes, they would be allowed to survive, but if
they attempted to fight back, the behemoth would crush them.
If these were private citizens making a similar offer to a
corner shopkeeper, this would be called extortion."

"Today's hearings included testimony by Bob Glaser, CEO of Real
Networks, creator, innovator, and maker of the Real Audio/Video
streaming products. He claims that Real Audio is disabled by the
Microsoft Windows Media Player bundled with Windows software.
Others -- including myself -- claim similar issues with
non-Microsoft Internet browsers and e-mail packages being
"subverted" by Microsoft products. However, Microsoft claims
that its products do not disable third-party software and that
"users are free to chose any products they want to use" on their
systems. As a systems administrator, I found this particularly
frustrating, especially in the legislative environment I was
working in at the time. In fact, one incident involved a
Microsoft product replacing all file associations with files
created by a competitor's product with its own. Imagine my
surprise when I ran my product and got error messages!"

"After declaring the Java threat a "top priority," Microsoft
sought to acquire, invest in, or close deals with several
companies to "take mindshare away from Sun," according to
internal Microsoft documents."

"Sun publicly accused Microsoft of adjusting Sun's "Java" to
cause its version to be the only one usable on "Wintel"
machines, but advertising as if Sun's original "Java" was
incorporated within, thus preventing anyone from straying from
"Wintel" in their future use of the real "Java". Sun has exposed
the "Wintel" group's attempt to use its power and deceit to
prevent the public from being able to use any other platform
options."

"Being an OS monopolist has its privileges, and making the
competition look bad on your ubiquitous desktop has to be one of
the sweetest. So it comes as no surprise that the Redmond Beast
has apparently decided to equip Windows XP with second-rate MP3
software, thereby limiting the recording and playback quality of
MP3 files which compete with its Windows Media Audio."

"Last week, people who tried to visit MSN.com with a
non-Microsoft browser found themselves locked out. Although
Microsoft's own Internet Explorer easily accessed the popular
site, other browsers--such as Opera, Mozilla, Amaya and some
versions of Netscape--received error messages and recommended
that people "upgrade" to Internet Explorer."

"After downloading Media Player and installing it on a system
already equipped with the RealNetworks' RealPlayer, attempts to
use RealPlayer failed and an error message was displayed. The
error message is fairly brief, and just reads "Can not play back
file. The format is not supported." This fails to give users any
information about how to remedy the situation and make
RealPlayer function again, Glaser said.

Glaser, who spent 10 years at Microsoft as a vice president for
multimedia and consumer systems but left five years ago, said he
was extremely reluctant to testify before the committee, but
that unless the actions taken by Microsoft are remedied, the
computing world will be "less friendly, less useful to
customers, and will slow down technical innovation.""

"Why would Microsoft want to prevent electronic greeting cards
from being delivered? It turns out that after an unsuccessful
attempt to purchase Blue Mountain Arts, Microsoft started its
own electronic greeting card service. The "bug" in Outlook
Express appeared at about the same time that Microsoft's
greeting card service began."

"Linux supporters have reacted violently to the Microsoft SA
release ... published on ITWeb yesterday, saying "the study was
paid for by Microsoft" and that "a very highly-tuned NT server
was pitted against a very poorly tuned Linux server".

In response, Ian Hatton, Windows platform manager at Microsoft
SA, says these comments are valid. "Microsoft did sponsor the
benchmark testing and the NT server was better tuned than the
Linux one.""

Why is it that Microsoft's products keep mushrooming in size
with each new release always requiring significantly more disk
space and more processing power than the last time? They might
claim it's because of all the new features they add each time,
but that's only half the story. The new features and the
increased processing requirements are designed to fuel the
process of perpetual upgrades. This is Microsoft's way of
rubbing Intel's back so that Intel will give Microsoft
preferential treatment when it comes out with new chip specs.
It's also Microsoft's way of convincing consumers that their
newer product versions are better because they are so much
bigger. Their new features are often superfluous but users must
still deal with the overhead required by the features even
though most will never use the features.

"What is not quite so routine is to see the discussion imply a
cold-blooded acceptance of methods including FUD tactics and
dirty tricks such as ``de-commoditizing'' open standards into
monopolistic lock-in devices."

Privacy

How to Avoid 1984 Through Our Computers

"Now that we can clearly see the evils Big Brother employed, we
should look at how people today are trying to create technology
to keep track of what we do every day of our lives. Right now,
cryptographers are finding out that Microsoft has placed a key
that allows the NSA into a person's computer without that
person's knowledge. With this key they could watch every step a
person made. As we become increasingly a computer-based society,
we might eventually be a society where Bill Gates "Is Watching
You". Even if Microsoft does not watch us all the time, the
government could. FBI Agents might turn into a kind of thought
police. These software keys are serious threats that may lead us
down the path to a 1984 society."

"This gets to the heart of why I'm really starting to worry.
Microsoft is encroaching on the consumer side, increasingly
using its position between us and every computer to make sure
that it has the data to know who we are and what we're buying.
Microsoft is also encroaching on the industry side, as it
expands the functionality of its software to such a degree that
there are fewer and fewer areas of the software business that it
does not control, even if it doesn't excel in those areas."

"With HailStorm, though, it wouldn't be the individual sites
collecting your information. What you do at Hotmail, say,
wouldn't stay just with Hotmail. That info would be combined in
a central database with what you read at Slate, what tickets you
buy at Expedia, and -- if it takes off -- what you buy at an
antique cookbook store, flower shops, and other retailers. It
would subvert the way cookies work in order to share information
about you."

With Microsoft's HailStorm .NET initiative hinging on the
company's very own PassPort service, you'd think Redmond would
be bending over backwards to stress the confidentially of user
information.

Well, if that's the case, it hasn't started yet.

The current Passport Terms of Use agreement not only fails to
guarantee confidentially, but actually gives Microsoft and its
business partners the right to own your information, and do
pretty much what they want with it. That encompasses all your
Hotmail and MSN Messenger communications today.

"Am I the only one who is terrified about Microsoft Passport? It
seems to me like a fairly blatant attempt to build the world's
largest, richest consumer database, and then make fabulous
profits mining it. It's a terrifying threat to everyone's
personal privacy and it will make today's "cookies" seem
positively tame by comparison. The scariest thing is that
Microsoft is advertising Passport as if it were a benefit to
consumers, and people seem to be falling for it! By the time
you've read this article, I can guarantee that I'll scare you
into turning off your Hotmail account and staying away from MSN
web sites."

The most interesting thing about all this is that it
accomplishes cross-domain exchange of cookie information.
Cookies ordinarily don't get sent back to any but the
originating domain. This mechanism of redirects allows cookie
data to be carried invisibly from one domain to another, and for
matching cookies to be created. It is a very clever technique.

An important aspect of this is its invisibility. Any ordinary
web browser follows the trail it's forced to follow by the
redirections, displaying nothing, while the user is none the
wiser.

A user who's merely checking the HTML source of the pages he's
visiting will see no indication of this exchange. Furthermore,
caching is disabled by meta tags and by http headers at
strategic points, so the user's browser cache doesn't retain any
evidence of what was done. Only the matching cookies remain to
attest to the data exchange. Who checks their cookies for
matching data across domains?

Microsoft said it redirects its various Web properties' visitors
to a single server that assigns them a unique identifier. That
identifier, an "MSID," lets Microsoft chart a single person's
visits and activities over the company's Web sites, which
include MSN.com and dozens of affiliated sites like Hotmail,
CarPoint, Expedia, bCentral and LinkExchange.

"Microsoft XP/Passport Unfair and Deceptive? U.S. PIRG on 26
July joined the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and
10 other groups in filing a Section 5 complaint to the Federal
Trade Commission alleging that the product is marketed in an
unfair and deceptive manner that invades privacy."

"More than 10 organizations, including privacy group Junkbusters
and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public-interest
group, are asking the FTC to prevent the launch of Windows XP
because of potential privacy problems arising from the operating
system and the company's Passport software.

The group plans to file the complaint later Thursday.

The complaint charges Microsoft with engaging in "unfair and
deceptive trade practices intended to profile, track and monitor
millions of Internet users. Central to the scheme is a system of
services, known collectively as '.Net'...that is designed to
obtain personal information from consumers in the United States
unfairly and deceptively.""

"Well, to use the program, you need an account with Microsoft
Passport, so I created one. In five minutes, I was back to
Reader Activation, and I made that single click.

This brought up what looked like a Reader page but was really a
browser window, and then downloaded a "Secure Repository" and an
encrypted Activation Certificate that "certifies your copy of
Microsoft Reader as being enabled for viewing protected
content."

Microsoft then loads information about your system, including a
computer hardware identification code. Microsoft says this
"respects the privacy of information about your computer
hardware" while still giving "access to many premium eBook
titles that have been copy protected."

That seemed to be innocent enough. Then I saw this question:
"How many computers can I activate Reader on?" Just two, it
turns out; if you want more than that, you need additional
Passport accounts. Now, with the gloves off, the iron fist is
exposed: "However, if you purchase an eBook on a computer where
you activated the Reader with your first Passport, you won't be
able to read that title on a computer where the Reader was
activated using your second Passport.""

"What if you could put ad links on every single web page on the
Internet? What if you could sell those links to other companies,
creating links back to their sites so they could sell their
products? Best of all, what if you didn't have to pay a single
dime to any of the webmasters carrying your ads? That's what
Microsoft can do with the new Smart Tags technology that they're
building into Windows XP products."

Some of this might seem familiar. You may remember that
Microsoft recently backed away from plans to become the world's
biggest purveyor of scumware. It yanked its own version of fake
scumware hyperlinks, called Smart Tags, from the newest versions
of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. Microsoft said it
might change its mind and use them at another time, however.

"A day before a national meeting convenes to discuss Microsoft's
business practices, a consumer rights group has released a
scathing report that accuses the software giant of spending at
least $4 billion in an attempt to dominate the Internet.
Microsoft called the study "biased."

According to a white paper released today by NetAction,
Microsoft is attempting to extend its PC operating system
monopoly to software and content that will drive the Internet.

"Microsoft is using both its control of the desktop and its
inroads into the server market to leverage control of emerging
Internet standards and commerce," the report stated. "If
unchecked, there is a very real possibility of Microsoft
becoming an unprecedented financial and technological colossus
bestriding more markets and industries than any monopolist has
ever aspired to dominate." "

Consumer

Consumers will win with end of monopoly

"Consumers should follow this lawsuit with keen interest because
they will be the big winners or the big losers," said Mitchell
Pettit, executive director of ProComp. "If the court makes
Microsoft obey the law and play by the rules of fair
competition, consumers will get more new products, more control
and fairer prices."

"Microsoft uses its power to drive competitors out of business
and to stop rivals from making breakthrough new products,"
Pettit added. "In the end, consumers pay the price. And the
price will go even higher if Bill Gates fulfills his goal of
dominating the Internet and muscling or buying his way into
other computer markets."

"But it failed to have enough "bite" said James Love, director
of The Consumer Project on Technology, which track consumer
rights in the technology markets.

"We aren't thrilled by any means," Love said. "It doesn't punish
Microsoft for past behaviour, it just tells them to quit doing
what they shouldn't have been doing, which made the company a
lot of money and gave it more dominance than it should've had."

"A structure that gives one company that much control over its
competitors is unfair, and the only sure remedy is to remove the
profit incentive for maintaining a monopoly on OSs. You simply
cannot provide one competitor with a club to pummel the
opposition into changing product plans and limiting the
customer's options."

"...One OS to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them..."
While parodying Tolkien may not really be appropriate, the
similarities between the Rings and the various Microsoft
products are striking. You can't get involved with one without
having to fight its attempts to take control of you."

"Under this new system, your obligation to Microsoft doesn't end
when you purchase the software, that merely begins it. Not
included in the activation dialog is the information that
trivial system changes may invalidate your activation, you will
be required to contact Microsoft each and every time you need to
re-activate the software for whatever reason, or if you try to
sell or give away the software (Microsoft only allows this to
happen once), or if you try to exercise your right to install
the software on two systems used by one person. Also, the total
number of activations is always less than 12, after which you
must throw the software away and start over."

"The antitrust remedies that ultimately bring the marauding
Microsoft to heel will have far-reaching consequences on future
software design and choices, on consumer prices, on the
competitiveness of e-commerce, on the very structure of the
Internet and hence our culture.

The factual case against Microsoft has been made devastatingly
clear. If Microsoft's long record of deception and
untrustworthiness is to be ended, the public remedies must be as
bold, sweeping, and effective as the company's private power."

1. Consumers are harmed by the Microsoft monopoly and Microsoft
anti-competitive practices. Prices for Microsoft Windows and
Microsoft applications are too high, particularly when one
considers the "forced upgrade" issue, the quality is poor,
particularly in terms of stability, and there is too little
choice.

2. Structural remedies, such as breaking up the company, will
benefit consumers. One need only look at the explosion of
innovation in Internet based applications, where there is no
single firm setting standards, and where competition is intense,
for evidence that private monopolies are not necessary for
standard setting and interoperability.

3. In the Halloween Document, MS indicated it saw the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF) in particular, and the Internet in
general, as a threat to Microsoft control over relevant APIs.
Microsoft is using its monopoly power in the PC OS and PC Office
suite markets to undermine applications based upon open
standards.

What you got...freedom of choice... What you want...freedom from choice...

"A recent study by NetAction, a non-profit watchdog group for
technology consumers, concludes Microsoft's strong-armed
marketing activities have robbed consumers of their freedom of
choice. Surveying the top 20 U.S. ISPs, NetAction discovered
only two of the top 12 ISPs give consumers a choice by including
Netscape Navigator with the start-up software. In fact, the top
three consumer ISPs -- America Online, CompuServe and Internet
MCI -- have agreed to supply customers only with Internet
Explorer. And just one of the three bothers to inform consumers
they have the option of downloading an alternative browser."

"A federal judge ruled Monday that Microsoft violated US
antitrust law by monopolizing the market for PC operating system
software and using its dominance against competitors.

Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, in a stinging 43-page conclusion
of law, said that Microsoft "maintained its monopoly power by
anticompetitive means and attempted to monopolize the Web
browser market." "

"We want Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior stopped for two
reasons. The first is obvious: such behavior ultimately deprives
consumers of choice, and this is blatantly detrimental to
product quality and future innovation. Also, we continue to feel
that Microsoft's offerings are technically and aesthetically
inferior, and we don't want to see these products win in the
marketplace by unfair means."

"What Microsoft is doing is patently illegal. Think about it. If
you want to build computers, you've got to ask Bill's
permission," Ellison said. "If Bill wanted to triple the price
on Windows, what would you do? You'd pay; you wouldn't have any
choice."

"Consumer advocates were even more distraught, because the
Article II revision had been the focus of much of their lobbying
efforts. Opponents, including an imposing list of influential
manufacturing associations, felt the revised Article II draft
was too consumer-friendly. But the list of UCITA opponents
-- which included attorneys general of
half the states, was an even more
imposing one."

Microsoft got a license to use the JVM (ed note: JAVA), then
modified it illegally to make it work better with Windows AND to
make it a separate product from Sun's, one which MS could
control. That has always been MS's modus operandi. I'm sure the
changes to the JVM did make it work better with Windows, but
those changes were still a violation of the licensing agreement.

"Stewart Nelson, chief operating officer at Novell, said: "These
questions and statements are completely false and misleading.
Microsoft has tried to create a fictitious end-of-life for
NetWare to create fear and uncertainty within Novell's customer
base and to discourage future customers from doing business with
Novell."

"Creating even more resentment is the fact that, according to
some corporate IT watchers, much Microsoft software in
businesses has appeared in businesses through "creep" - through
pressure from users, rather than through the corporate IT
departments."

"There is no doubt that Microsoft has come to the same
conclusion as everyone else in the industry: The Java platform
is an excellent technology that enjoys tremendous success.
Rather than embracing the cross-platform, vendor neutral
solution which is the Java platform, like most of the industry,
Microsoft is still pushing a single platform, vendor-specific
solution. The .NET platform is an improvement for Visual C++ and
Visual Basic programmers, but it is yet another proprietary
Microsoft platform which will tie the developer to Windows,
albeit possibly a .NET-ized notion of Windows."

"McNealy... said Microsoft was leveraging its dominance into
Microsoft Network, its server business, set-top boxes, content,
and computer games and taking large stakes in AT&T, Nextel
Communications, and possibly DirecTV."

"We are astonished that rather than use the results of our
independent analysis to better their product offering, Microsoft
would choose to attack The Standish Group." "All the thirty
users interviewed complained of NT availability concerns,
stating the system often crashed for no apparent reason and
required a reboot. When Standish asked Microsoft why NT had
these availability problems, they responded stating they
recently completed a new feature: the system will now reboot 50%
faster." "Our report stated what is widely known in the industry
today - NT is just not ready for mission-critical applications."

"Microsoft, in other words, behaved like a surly kid who,
resenting some parental order, throws a tantrum by obeying too
well: "Throw out my comic books? I'll show you!" and Dad finds
the encyclopedia in the trash can, too."

"Microsoft has been reported to the DTI by an IT trade body over
licensing changes which it believes will cost its members
£880m over four years.

Members of The Infrastructure Forum have said price hikes should
be investigated as a potential abuse of monopoly power. Tif has
98 corporate members with a combined IT budget of £18bn a
year, including 22 of the UK's 50 biggest companies.

The group told the DTI that Microsoft's changes, which will be
phased in from 1 October, will mean 94% cost increases for their
members."

Microsoft is wielding its monopoly power in a third crucial
market, in its attack on the popular Palm Pilot handheld
computer with its own pocket-size version of Windows, the
government said in another court filing. It cited a July 11,
1999, e-mail to senior executives from Microsoft's chairman,
Bill Gates, that "indicated a willingness to change the details
of its Office applications to favor devices that run on Windows,
even if doing so disadvantages other customers who now rely on
the Palm Pilot," officials said. The Gates e-mail was placed
under court seal at Microsoft's request, officials said.

"Let's face facts," said the e-mail, according to the government
filing, which didn't identify the message's author, "innovation
has never been Microsoft's strong suit. We're much better at
ripping off our competitors." The message, which remains under
court seal, cites examples -- including the basic Internet
Explorer technology -- that were bought by Microsoft from
smaller companies rather than developed internally.

"Given this prospect, Microsoft seems "to have no reluctance in
employing the same strategy that won the desktop wars and the
browser wars and is now winning the instant messaging war,"
Wasch said. "Microsoft is pursuing a strategy in which they
believe they will never be broken up and they will never be
subject to any meaningful business restrictions."

"Since May, Microsoft has been trying to muscle licensees into
upgrading sooner than they might have otherwise. The company is
threatening that subsequent volume licenses would cost far more
unless a company has licenses for current versions by February
28, 2002. The effort was crude, complete with harassing letters
and tough-talking telemarketing scripts used on confused
customers who called the company for clarification."

"The tech bills spring from a proposal with an arcane name, the
Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, or UCITA. If
states pass this legislation, the impact on consumers would be
dramatic:

If customers fall behind on fees or software lease payments,
sellers would have the right to reach into customers' computers
and remotely shut off programs.

The bills include a provision that e-mail could serve as formal
legal notice of everything from a change in terms of the
contract to a warning that service will be cut off, all without
any evidence that the e-mail ever reached an individual.

The fine print of nondisclosure clauses in software packages
could be used by software makers to block the publishing of
reviews of their product.

Most software sales would be redefined as licensing agreements,
giving software makers the power to set terms forbidding the
future sale or even donation of the material.

"It might even mean I can't donate my old computer to my kid's
school without taking off all the software," said Gail
Hillebrand, senior attorney of Consumers Union. Hillebrand said
the tech legislation would drastically weaken the most basic
consumer-protection laws."

Forget Windows 2000. As far as I can tell, the single most
lucrative product Microsoft sells is its own stock. Microsoft
receives almost as much cash inflow from the stock market as it
does by selling goods and services.

"And from the outside, Microsoft has long been harshly
criticized for taking advantage of other companies, including
some who thought they were Microsoft's partners. Mike Maples
says the Microsoft ethic was as simple as the law of the
jungle."

Official reportedly told Intel that Microsoft "owned software to the metal."

"Steve McGeady, the Intel executive who on Monday said Microsoft
was out to stop his company's software development efforts,
reiterated many of those charges before concluding his testimony
in the antitrust trial against Microsoft late Tuesday morning."

By insisting that Intel slow its rate of innovation, Doherty
said, Gates was not precisely blocking innovation -- a frequent
charge made by Microsoft accusers -- but was instead "changing
the rate of the clock a little bit to (better) match the
Microsoft pace of information rollout."

"Some would say (Microsoft) was throttling Intel back to
delivering the pace to others. Others would say it was in the
interests of Microsoft to make sure it (Intel) worked with their
software upgrade plan."

"Soon after that, Microsoft began giving away 3D technology
licenses. That's right: The software was absolutely free to
anyone who asked (except us). Free is a very hard price to
beat--especially since the software previously had cost $50,000
or more per license."

"Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates in a seething email threatened
to destroy @Home, a cable venture offering high-speed Internet
access, because of its "anti- Microsoft" stance, according to
documents released in the Microsoft antitrust trial."

(editor's note: Written in 1998, events in late 2001 affirm
Gate's success)

None dare call it blackmail

"Edward Black, head of the Computer and Communications Industry
Association, said Microsoft, whose operating system is used on
90 percent of personal computers, was telling computer makers
they must use its Web brower "or else."

"It has elements of extortion," Black told reporters at a news
conference."

"Details are emerging about how Microsoft forced some of the
biggest OEMs to bundle its Internet Explorer browser with
Windows 95. Compaq, Gateway 2000 and Micron are among the PC
makers that told the Justice Department how Microsoft threatened
to revoke their Win 95 licenses if they removed IE or the IE
icon from the operating system.

The DOJ is asking the courts to find Microsoft in contempt of a
1995 antitrust agreement and to fine the company a $1 million a
day (nonretroactively) for each day it remains in
noncompliance."

Before long, a power point will be the ownership of the
standards for streaming audio and video data at high speeds
across the Internet. A hodgepodge of companies have been working
to create these standards -- but Microsoft, proudly defending
its right to "innovate," has had its checkbook out and now owns
all or part of each of these companies.

(Quoting CCIA) "The threat of Microsoft gaining server dominance
by leveraging their desktop monopoly is real. By designing
technological tie-ins, driving IT managers toward homogenous
Windows environments, blocking competitive server operating
systems through Microsoft proprietary interoperability, and
requiring the installation of Windows 2000 servers to gain full
use of the Windows 2000 desktop, Microsoft is replicating the
tactics used to bring IE to dominance in the browser market,"
the report said."

"Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates mandated that if companies such
as Walt Disney and Intuit wanted "top-level" marketing
agreements, they "would be promoting Microsoft's Internet
Explorer preferentially to Netscape Navigator and any other
leading browser," Will Poole testified at the company's
antitrust trial."

"Microsoft is not only giving away NetMeeting with every copy of
Internet Explorer 4.0 and every new installation of the Windows
operating system, it is also providing the default gathering
place for NetMeeting users anxious to fire up their software and
gain entree into the world of Internet videoconferencing....

...as one amazed NetMeeting experimenter discovered, "a 24-hour
international sex orgy is being hosted by Microsoft." If you're
looking for a cybersex "show," Microsoft is where you want to go
today."

"One of the most powerful factors of Microsoft's market
dominance these past 10 years, is the view that the company wins
every marketing battle it enters. This is regardless of the
quality of its products on offer within any particular market
segment. This has the following tangible and intangible effects:

1) Consumers know that Microsoft will win through marketing
flummery or competitor acquisition, so they often delay
acquiring products within a technological segment until
Microsoft has made its move. Everyone loathes technology
evolutionary dead-ends.

2) Competitors hold back on competing, as many of them are
single-product enterprises, and never have the marketing muscle
and anti-competitive product leverage options that Microsoft
has. Risking all would mean annihilation.

3) Venture capitalists are warned off from pumping money into
any company which may potentially produce products or services
which directly compete with Microsoft, thus starving the
economic engine for innovative products and services. This is
bad."

"The Microsoft Corporation is so eager to sell to colleges that
it's making deals, giving software away, and luring campus
computing experts with rich stipends -- all in the hope of
persuading college officials that making Microsoft products the
campus standard will save money and time."

"Microsoft's reference products present themselves as objective
repositories of information and are used as such by millions of
people all over the world...

...what Encarta says is what children and many, many adults take
to be God's truth.

Yet in their own small ways, Bookshelf and Encarta are also
exhibit A for the worrying trend .... As Microsoft's hand in the
creation and distribution of content continues to grow -- via
overt projects like MSNBC and the Microsoft Network, along with
the subtler influences the company wields through Windows itself
-- it's instructive to look at how the company tells its own
story in its reference works. What kind of self-benefiting spin
do we find in its ostensibly objective "information products"?
How does Microsoft write about Microsoft?"

"What's incredibly frustrating for everybody covering this is
that when these guys go on background they still bullshit you.
I've had one of Microsoft's top legal people tell me a
bald-faced lie -- a bald-faced legal lie. Not like something he
would not have known or understood; it was flat-out bullshit. I
said, 'Do you want to go off the record here?' He said, 'I
wouldn't tell you anything different.' It was insane, and I was
able to get another lawyer to say that this guy is full of it in
print."

Public Relations

Go where ya wanna go...do watcha wanna do

"Besides, praising Microsoft is the job of its four (that I know
of) PR agencies, which crank out pro-company propaganda, forum
postings, and letters to the editor. I'm baffled by writers who
parrot the Microsoft corporate litany as spewed by the PR
agencies. Can't these people think for themselves? Apparently
not, as I see the dreaded word "innovation" creep into articles
and columns as if Microsoft actually were an innovative company.
I seem to be the only one who cares about the never-ending
propagandistic use of this word by Microsoft."

"The details of this covert PR campaign are hilariously
shocking. Microsoft planned to commission news articles, letters
to the editor, and op-ed testimonials, written by Microsoft's
own spinmeisters, but signed and submitted by local
businesspeople who would be paid for their efforts. All this
chicanery to create the appearance of a vast grassroots
groundswell of public affection for Microsoft."

"According to the article in The Journal, the commission
contended that Microsoft falsely presented 34 letters from
companies purporting to support its case. In many cases the
letters had been written by Microsoft or the companies were not
aware they were to be used as evidence in the case, the
commission said, according to the report."

The revelations reported in the Los Angeles Times last week
regarding an elaborate Microsoft plan--to snooker both the
government and the public with a fake "grass roots" campaign
orchestrated by dozens of large and powerful public-relations
agencies--sickened me."

"Oracle spokeswoman Jennifer Glass told CNNfn, "As a result
Oracle discovered both the Independent Institute and the
National Taxpayer's Union were misrepresenting themselves as
independent advocacy groups when in fact they were funded by
Microsoft for the express purpose to influence public opinion in
favor of Microsoft in the antitrust trial.""

(Quoting a reader) "Microsoft is now resorting to spam as a call
to action in its fight for the freedom to inundate (oops
'innovate')," Mr. Smith wrote. "I was spammed by Microsoft, and
then told that by reading the message I agreed to a EULA -- I am
stunned by the arrogance."

Stung by the public relations fallout from antitrust
investigations of its business practices, Microsoft Corp. has
secretly been planning a massive media campaign designed to
influence state investigators by creating the appearance of a
groundswell of public support for the company.

The elaborate plan, outlined in confidential documents obtained
by The Times, hinges on a number of unusual--and some say
unethical--tactics, including the planting of articles, letters
to the editor and opinion pieces to be commissioned by
Microsoft's top media handlers but presented by local firms as
spontaneous testimonials.

The biggest surprise about the astroturf documents isn't that
Microsoft would resort to deception. Rather, it's what the
campaign said about Microsoft's view of its own position.
Companies that use astroturf concede that the public would be
less inclined to believe their side if it knew who was pulling
the strings. That tells you that Microsoft, which has enjoyed
substantial public support, believes the public's trust has
wavered."

``He should have told us,'' Simon Hakim, an economist at Temple
University, said yesterday when told of the financing. ``I would
not have participated if I had known. It's not right to use
people as a vehicle for special interests.''

So, not only did Microsoft try to enter false evidence into the
trial (the false and doctored tape) they also barred for two
hours the government officials from entering the room where the
computers were being set up. And we're supposed to trust
Microsoft wasn't up to any funny business? The ironic thing here
is that Microsoft was still unable to produce the results they
desired, thus making the DOJ's case that much stronger.

"The European Commission (EC) has accused Microsoft Corp. of
trying to obstruct an investigation into the company's alleged
antitrust behavior, and of misleading investigators by falsely
presenting supporting evidence, according to published reports."

"The LA Times carried an article on October 15, 1999 regarding
how many of Microsoft's "allies" have lobbied to cut federal
funding for the Department of Justice's anti-trust division
"after an all-expenses-paid trip to Microsoft headquarters in
Redmond, Wash., where they were entertained and briefed on an
array of issues facing the company." Microsoft can't win their
trial on their own, so they have to wine and dine other
companies to bat their eyelashes at the government asking that
the DoJ's budget be cut. Quite sad."

Legend

The Six Serendipities of Microsoft

"It has become a matter of conventional wisdom to place the
credit for Microsoft's success squarely on the shoulders of Bill
Gates, by leaps and bounds the most brilliant, innovative
competitor in an industry packed with talented operators. But on
what basis has Gates and his company earned the right to be
placed on such a lofty pedestal?"

"How did Microsoft and its executives get so rich so fast? It
wasn't through "innovation" (even Microsoft execs can't come up
with a genuine Microsoft innovation). It wasn't by giving credit
where credit was due. It wasn't by giving others the best deal,
or giving them the best product.

A few hundred million a year well spent on PR has most of the
world believing it was exactly these things that made them rich.
In reality, it was an intense, single minded determination to
make the most possible money by marketing and popularizing
innovations, without regard, or compensation, to those who
originated or who owned these innovations."

"Microsoft is the Borg of the high-tech industry," said Mr Black
referring to the rapacious race from Star Trek that tries to
assimilate every culture it encounters. The history of computers
shows that it has cherry picked technologies that have proved
popular.

Mr Black said that in all the areas where Microsoft is not
dominant, such as the internet, innovation is rampant."

"When some people hear that the U.S. government is pushing for
severe penalties -- including a possible breakup -- against
Microsoft Corporation, they are shocked and dismayed. They
believe that there is a true "free market" at work in America,
and that any government intervention in the current marketplace
is misguided and dangerous. They believe that all success
springs from innovation and hard work (but never from
corruption), and that the current economic conditions are the
robust result of this "free market" at work. In other words,
they believe Microsoft."

This is the way Microsoft works: they have a product team for
each product, and every year or two, that team ships a new
version of their software. That's all. What we have here, ladies
and gentlemen, is a pure marketing team that looked around at
all the upcoming releases, decided they need a "theme" to make
Microsoft look like Big Revolutionary Innovators, and ordering
everyone to call their next thing ".NET".

Microsoft surely would like to have the benefit of our code
without the responsibilities. But it has another, more specific
purpose in attacking the GNU GPL. Microsoft is known generally
for imitation rather than innovation. When Microsoft does
something new, its purpose is strategic--not to improve
computing for its users, but to close off alternatives for them.

"It's pretty clear that if for the last five years customers had
real operating systems and real application choices, everything
would be better, faster, cleaner, more reliable, and cheaper,"
Gassee said."

(Quoting Larry Ellison) "Microsoft has innovated nothing. The
thing I find most contemptible is Bill's lying, this thing about
innovating. It makes me want to puke. That's innovation a la
Rockefeller, not innovation a la Edison," the database tycoon
said in an exclusive interview with PC Week Online."

"Perhaps you thought that software was frozen thought, or the
highest form of artifact or even the nervous system of the
modern enterprise? Wrong. It's a packaged good, sold like soap
flakes, shaping -- and limiting -- the buyer's expectations."

A bunch of geeks got interested in computers because they were
fun, and they didn't have much of a social life. Many of these
people were sharp -- but not THAT sharp. They geeked around and
played with electronics and computer BECAUSE THEY LIKED IT! Now
some of these people happened to be in the right place at the
right time, and had the wisdom to take advantage of it -- but
lets not pretend these guys were that insightful! They were
doing what they enjoyed, and it just happened to be in an
industry that took off (like cars in the 20's and 30's), and
they rode the tide upwards to success.

Bill Gates was one of these. He was lucky, had connections (and
wealthy parents), and happened to be in the right place at the
right time. Oh, yeah, and he wasn't stupid either.

Labor

Shell game

"In a January 1996 article in Details magazine, a temp worker
revealed that Microsoft has a sinister dual-track employment
system. Under this regime, much of the real work at the company
was accomplished by a lower caste of "orange badge" workers --
perma-temps who were denied access to the company cafeteria,
refused stock option discounts, and banned from company picnics.

It is widely believed that Microsoft has been using third-party
employment agencies for many years as a shell-game to attempt to
avoid paying medical and unemployment benefits to these
underlings, claiming that they were not really Microsoft
employees."

"In another victory for temporary workers at Microsoft, the
Supreme Court today let stand a ruling that greatly expanded the
number of employees who could sue the software giant to purchase
stock options and get other benefits."

"Blain said that the added benefits amounted to a cosmetic
change designed to boost Microsoft's image. "They still hire
people for years on end and call them temps," he said. Blain's
union wants Redmond to offer contractors the same benefits as
permanent employees."

"In the opinion, issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals' Ninth
Circuit, Microsoft was found to have denied benefits to workers
who had been misclassified as independent contractors during the
late 1980s. The court's decision, involving hundreds of former
and current employees, is expected to have little financial
impact on the world's biggest software maker."